Here's my latest wine Ten Best for the Independent, on roses
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/the-ten-best-ross-867230.html
There are some terrific roses around, which are perfect for drinking during the summer months, or rather when we have some summer...To my mind, you cant really enjoy rose unless the weather's hot (or warm at the very least) so lets keep our fingers crossed that we might get a few better weeks between now and the end of August, for sitting outside, eating some nice Mediterranean food and sipping an iced rose. They do it all over southern Europe, so why not here? At the moment, its cool and rainy, so....
Unfortunately, I can't recommend the one rose that to me is probably the most memorable I've drunk. It was many years ago, on the island of Fueteventura in the Canary Isles - a curious place that seems more like a setting for a Spaghetti western that a holiday spot - but the local fish from the warm Atlantic is cheap, abundant and fabulous, usually served simply grilled with garlic and a choice of red chili and green coriander sauces, which owe more to North African cuisine than Spanish. And the almost deserted beaches are sensational - or at least they were then. I suspect the tourist hoards may well have made more inroads since. Anyway, one evening, my then wife, Marion, and I had been directed a small village in a sparsely populated part of the west coast of the island, where we had been assured that terrific local peasant food was awaiting us, if we knocked at a certain door, marked Marias (or something like that) After losing our way in the twilight, we eventually arrived in this village - hot, dusty deserted streets, no lighting, a few stray dogs, shuttered houses, that sort of thing. After soom mooching around, we found this door, with a small sign that said Marias (or something like that) in a side street and peered through one of those plastic strip curtains so popular in hot countries. Inside was a small room and what appeared to be an elderly woman, dozing in a chair. There was a far off sound of a television, in Spanish. I was all for calling it a day and heading somewhere more welcoming, but Marion insisted on ringing the bell, mumbling about coming all this way, starving etc. No response. The women continued dozing. She tried again. No joy. Eventually, something stirred deep inside the house and an elderly man came to the door. The woman continued to doze. We tried to say something about looking for somewhere to eat, but the man wordlessly, but welcomingly, ushered us inside, past the dozing one and into a back room, where there were several plastic clothed topped tables and an assortment of chairs. A single bright light illuminated the room. It was pretty basic. He motioned to us to sit down. Clearly this was a place that served food, although with hindsight, I suspect we might have been a bit late in the day for them. Or maybe they just did lunchtimes. The man disappeared into the kitchen and there was a good deal of clunking and clattering of pots and pans. In another darkened room, separated from the dining area by another plastic curtain, what appeared to be an entire family sat on a bed, watching television, entirely indifferent to us. After a few minutes, we were each presented with a bowl of intensely flavoured fish broth, with some prawns floating in it. Fantastic. This was followed by a large platter of chunks of white fish, moistened with the broth and flecked with saffron strands. Again, simple, but fantastic. This was accompanied by a basket of bread and potatoes boiled for a long time in highly salted water, a Canary Islands speciality. And also the point of this story - a bottle of unlabeled, ice cold light pink rose, clearly straight from the deepest recesses of the fridge, covered with condensation and plonked unceremoniously on the table with a couple of Duralex tumblers. It was not, I think, from Fuertaventura, where the climate and soil don't favour grapes, but the neighbouring island of Lanzarote, where the volcanic soils are more fertile. And it was perfect: bone dry, almost acidic, light and refreshing, the only possible accompaniment to such basic, elemental, cuisine eaten on a hot night. Desert, by the way, was a bunch of bananas. And the cost? Well, minimal, obviously. We left, extraordinarily satisfied and with grateful thanks, past the still dozing senorita.
As I said in the earlier posting about moules frites, it was a trip where we ate and drank in a much more elegant fashion at other points, but it is such singular, authentic experiences, where the eating and drinking are inexorably linked with the surroundings and the occasion, that linger in the mind and on the palate many years later.